TECHNOLOGY
Water
The Water Crisis…
And the technology to help BY ROSE TRING
A
An early morning hike along the sunbaked edges of Boulder Bay at Lake Mead confirms what scientists and media are shouting to anyone who cares to listen: All of us living in the Southwest must face the consequences of a rapidly dwindling water supply that experts say may never fully recover in a dryer, hotter future.
“There’s no question it’s a situation that is very serious,” says Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s (ASU) Morrison Institute for Public Policy. “But in the Phoenix area, we have other water supplies. We have a diverse water portfolio. Bigger, older cities in the Phoenix metropolitan area have water from SRP, CAP, and the aquifers. What we have to do is manage these resources for long-term sustainability.” Governors in Arizona, Nevada, California, Colorado, and Washington are mandating water conservation measures such as reducing water usage by 10% to 15% for farms and some industry, and many have declared drought emergencies. While residents might not see the impact immediately, higher costs for food and goods are likely when water flow to farms and industry is restricted by the multi-state Drought Contingency Plan expected to take effect in January 2022. “The Colorado River system is in poor health hydrologically. Shortage declarations and cutbacks in deliveries are triggered by the level of Lake Mead but they cannot ‘prop
54
GREEN LIVING
|
greenlivingmag.com
up’ Lake Mead enough to avoid cutbacks if the inflows are very low,” says Sharon B. Medgal, Ph.D. and director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center (WRRC). “A key question is how deep will the cutbacks be over time. Consider: • Lake Mead is at the lowest level (1,067.79 feet on July 15, 2021) it has experienced since the Hoover Dam opened in the 1930s on the Colorado River and filled the nation’s largest reservoir to supply farms, industry, and 40 million people living in Nevada, Arizona, and Southern California. • Scientists call the drought a “mega drought” and describe it as the worst dry spell the Southwest has experienced in nearly 1,200 years. • According to the World Health Organization, one-half the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas by 2025.
